But it might not be much longer before airborne CAGs were a thing of the past The Navy was experimenting with a new way of running things, introducing the “SuperCAG” concept that would make CAG a captain’s billet and let him share responsibilities with the carrier’s skipper.
And won’t that be fun, Tombstone thought with an ironic grin beneath his oxygen mask. The poor bastard might never get to fly anything but his desk.
All of this had set Tombstone to thinking. He was the CO of the Tomcat squadron designated VF-95, socially known as the Vipers. Almost thirty years old, Tombstone had lived for carrier aviation since the day he’d shown up for flight training at Pensacola. Before long he’d be up for promotion to commander, and that Stateside billet on his way to a CAG slot of his own. All along, he’d been moving up the Navy career ladder, the goal of CAG clearly in sight. And after that . . . well, to be skipper of an aircraft carrier, you had to have served a stretch as CAG. There were only fifteen carrier command billets in the whole U.S. Navy and openings were rare, but Tombstone had never really entertained doubts that he would make it … some day.
But die doubts were with him now. Not whether he would make it, but whether he should even try. He had some tough decisions coming up.
10
“Viper Leader, Viper Two,” Batman said over the tactical frequency. “Tally-ho! Tanker ahoy at twelve o’clock low.”
“I see him,” Marusko said.
Tombstone glanced up from his controls and caught the flash of sun glint off an aircraft canopy far ahead. “Got him, Batman. We’ll take first crack. Breaking left.”
“Copy, Leader.”
Tombstone slid the F-14 into a left-hand barrel roll while CAG was still speaking, going inverted and following his starboard wing over in a long, sideways fall that bottomed out at 27,000 feet. Ahead, the KA-6D tanker plowed toward the horizon at a steady 250 knots.
“Tango X-ray One-one,” he called. “Viper Two-oh-one. Coming in for some of your basic I&I.”
“Affirmative, Two-oh-one. Come on in. We’re sweet, hot, and willing.”
I&I, intercourse and intoxication, was the Navy man’s reworking of die more traditional R&R. Much of the slang and banter associated with air-to-air refueling carried a strongly sexual content, for obvious reasons. Sweet meant they had fuel.
The KA-6D was a conventional A-6 Intruder converted into a fuel tanker, a “Texaco” in Navy jargon. With 500-gallon drop tanks slung beneath wings and fuselage plus what was carried on board, it could transfer up to 21,000 pounds of fuel—over 3,200 gallons—to other aircraft. As Tombstone approached the tanker from the rear, the tanker extended a fifty-foot boom from its belly, a slender hose tipped by a basket that resembled an iron mesh shuttlecock.
Tombstone pulled a selector switch and the Tomcat’s fuel probe swung out of the right side of the nose with a small whine of hydraulics. He eased the F-14 forward until the broomstick-thick snout of the probe stabilized about six feet behind the trailing basket. Turbulence buffeted the F-14 and its small target.
At this range, the tanker loomed overhead, an enormous gray whale precariously suspended just beyond the canopy. Tombstone needed every ounce of concentration to keep the F-14 steady, easing the aircraft gently forward, countering the rumbling vibration of the tanker’s slipstream. Since he had to concentrate on the other aircraft only yards away, his RIO
ARMAGEDDON MODE
11
watched the relative positions of probe and basket and gave him the instructions to drive the plug home.
“Left a tad,” Marusko said over the ICS. Tombstone corrected gently, still concentrating on the tanker. “And up. Three feet. Looking good …”
Tombstone was sweating beneath his oxygen mask and helmet, despite the cool, dry air in the cockpit Air-to-air refueling was a routine part of any patrol, with the aircraft topping off their tanks after they’d catapulted from the deck and reached cruising altitude. The procedure was not nearly as nerve-racking as, say, landing on the deck of an aircraft carrier in a heavy sea at night . . . but there was a definite pucker factor involved in the maneuver that had very little leeway for error. Tombstone could feel his heart beating faster as he studied the relative positions of the two aircraft and the slowly closing gap between them. Both planes were traveling now at 375 knots, and die rate of closure was down to less than a foot per second. Sweat blurred his vision . . . “Back out!” Marusko shouted. “Abort! Abort!” Tombstone tried to correct . . . too late. One hundred pounds of iron basket smashed into the canopy like a sledgehammer. The noise was so loud, so sharp, that for a second Tombstone thought the cockpit had been blown. The Tomcat shuddered again as the basket rebounded, then snapped back into the aircraft’s side with a jarring thump. The danger was as sharp as it was sudden. The loose basket could easily splinter the F-14’s canopy or get sucked down an intake and shred turbofan blades, engine, and fuel lines.